Updated risk assessment for full opening

The risk assessment template for full opening in March is available at this link.

A reminder that officers are holding a webinar on Tuesday 2nd March 12pm – 1pm to discuss this risk assessment and support schools with any queries. Places can be booked using this Eventbrite link and a Teams link will be sent before the webinar with the slides and recording distributed to all schools afterwards.

Support for families eligible for free school meals over Easter holidays

We are pleased to be able to confirm that we have secured provision for one week’s worth of supermarket vouchers for children eligible for free school meals over the Easter holiday in the first instance.  This will be funded through Winter COVID Grant Scheme funding.  We have been informed that the Department of Work and Pensions will be providing information regarding extension to the COVID Winter Grant Scheme within the coming days. We hope to use this funding to provide a further week of vouchers for the Easter holidays and will make arrangements for this if the extension of funding is confirmed.

In order to make the process as streamlined as possible and to ensure that eligible children receive a voucher, we will:

• Ask schools to complete an online form stating the number of children eligible.  A link to this form will be sent out by 5th March and will be available from 8th to the 12th March 2021. The form will ask schools for separate numbers of vouchers required for
  • children eligible under the usual criteria
  • children eligible under the temporary COVID eligibility for families with no recourse to public funds
  • eligible children in nursery provision
• Match the requests from the online form against the February half-term allocations for schools and may follow up with schools where there is a significant discrepancy in numbers.
• Voucher codes will be allocated on the basis of the number requested via the online form.  If no online form has been submitted by a school, the allocation for that school will be based on the numbers provided in the February half-term voucher allocation.
• The council expects to upload to Perspective by 19th March at the latest. The upload will include the Sodexo Guidance and advice on communicating the timeframe for using the vouchers to parents.

We will provide an update communication and a link to the online form next week.  We advise schools to collect the information on the numbers of eligible children in readiness for completing the online form on 8th March.